Inverse dynamics of gel robots made of electro-active polymer gel

Abstract

This paper formulates and solves the inverse dynamics problem of deformable robots made entirely of electro-active polymer gel. One of the primary difficulties with deformable robots is that they have conceptually infinite degrees of freedom. We solve this problem through the selection of an essential point to generate a desired motion. The problem is then reduced to trajectory control of a point on the robot. We have proposed dynamic models of electro-active polymers system and derived a variety of motions by applying either spatially or time varying electric fields. However, the motion control problem has not yet been investigated. We show a procedure to realize an inversion (turning over) motion of a starfish-shaped gel robots by applying both spatially varying and time alternating electric fields. This work takes the first step towards motion control of deformable robots.